Systems and methods for data storage management have long been recognized in the computing arts. Traditionally, data storage management has included volatile and non-volatile memory devices ranging from registers to flash memory devices. For some time now, operating systems have been configured to manage data organized hierarchically under a logical device. More recently, schemes have been developed and implemented to manage arrays of logical devices such as a redundant array of inexpensive disks more commonly known as RAID. These arrays of inexpensive disks can be arranged and used to ensure various levels of data integrity even when a RAID suffers a failure of one of the disks.
Applications, however, are configured to allocate, use, and manage these and other data storage devices in a myriad of various ways. Some individual applications are configured with documentation and/or help menus to assist administrators determine the amount of raw data storage needed to operate the application. Many of these application specific data storage schemes require a system administrator to be aware of any number of details which have no direct relationship to the storage needs of the application being deployed on the system. These and other data storage implementations require system administrators to know storage components and data abstractions from a physical storage perspective and in terms specific to the various applications deployed across a system.
Thus, a heretofore-unaddressed need exists to provide improvements to systems and methods for managing data storage that addresses the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.